It's an old saw, I know, but twice inspired, once shy holds as much water today as ever. Maybe more, if the beaker is emptied after every squall. But even amid the squalor of subsuburban life there's a place for the shy person, and that place has a name, and its name is mud. Spring showers may come and go, but in the aftermath of that grand equation known as Ohm's Law, mud is a useful balm that soothes away the hours before the medics arrive.

Leaving no unsightly stains on the rumpled fabric of our lives, mud clings like a thirsty leech to the edge of lightning's teacup, hiccupping away the discomfort of many a dull morning on the roof, pole in hand, waiting for the clap of thunder that so often spells curtains, two encores, and a trip to the little green room below the stage.

And so it goes, day after day, night after night, one foot in front and two behind the scrim that hangs, like rain clouds, from the gutters and downspouts that soon will run full of Odin's overflow. To the rooftops! To the rooftops! I hear them still, the little wretches, calling through the keyholes and lox, their mouths filled with bagels and creamed cheeses from the other side of town.

The question, then, isn't so much one of voltage multiplied by current, or which leads to sufficient power for toasting bread before company arrives. Conversely, the answer isn't so much one of resistance, or how many electrons it takes to cover the roof with negative attention.

You turn the hackneyed into the hawk-eyed. You take a platitude and give it an attitude. You tinker with the trite until it's just right. You crack open an old chestnut, toss it into the stock phrase, and raise the heat to "maxim."

Aaaaiiiii! You have rendered me comebackless with the formidable language-projectiles you lob from your lobe. I go now to seek the guidance of Mimir the Talking Head, keeper of Odin's missing eyeball, so that I, too, might be full of knowledge and stuff.